First Meeting
by Lady Fingers20
Summary: A two-shot story depicting the time that Ian sees Wanda in Melanie's body out in the desert and they bring her back to the caves.
1. Chapter 1

**This is a two-shot story that I am doing for Aikio Hatate. I got a PM from them, wanting to see a story from Ian's POV about the first time that he sees Wanda. So here you go! For you! I hope that I did it justice! : )**

**Disclaimer: I do not own The Host or any of its characters; they belong to the lovely Stephenie Meyer. I do however, own the plot. Some of the dialogue is taken directly from "The Host", pages 119-127, but it was only used for creative purposes.**

**Ian POV**

Kyle and I were on patrol that night when we first saw it. We had just switched off with Brandt and Aaron when Kyle first spotted something moving on the horizon.

"Ian, what is that?" he asked me, looking through the pair of binoculars that we used to scope out the landscape around us.

"What is what?" I asked him and he pointed off in the distance towards something but I couldn't see anything, so I stole the binoculars off of him and took a look through them.

Sure enough, there was something moving out in the distance. It was definitely a human as it was walking on two legs, but it looked sort of drunk and tired by the way that it seemed to be dragging itself along the ground very slowly.

"Do you think it's human?" I asked Kyle, just to see what he thought.

"I don't know. I would guess so, I mean, what Soul would be wandering alone all the way out here in the desert?"

I didn't have an answer for that one. I kept looking through and then I saw it fall towards the ground, seeming to give up its search for whatever it was looking for.

"It fell over," I reported. "Do we go get Jeb or someone?"

"I dunno, do you think we should?" he asked and I rolled my eyes.

"You know, Kyle that boulder over there is almost smarter than you," I told him and he punched my shoulder.

"Just for that little remark Ian, you can go and find Jeb, ya jackass," he said to me, taking the binoculars from my hands and looking through them once again.

"Fine," I said, turning and walking away from our post and went back down into the caves.

I went to look in the most likely place to find Jeb; the kitchens, and sure enough he was sitting at a table with Sharon and Maggie. I didn't want to discuss this in front of everyone, so I had to get him by himself.

"Ian!" he called out, spotting me. "Aren't you supposed to be out with Kyle right now?"

"Um, yes actually I was, I just wanted to talk to you about something first, actually," I told him and the three of them looked up at me expectantly. "Alone," I clarified and he shook his head, crossing his arms.

"Nope. You got something to say, you can say it here."

I sighed and walked all the way over to the table, sliding in beside Jeb; he would make this more difficult than it needed to be. That was just Jeb's style.

"We spotted something," I told him in a low voice and he immediately bent closer, nodding for me to continue. "It's a few miles out and we think that it might be a human or something. It's probably not in too good shape, because it's fallen over and it's the middle of the night; something could get it," I explained and he made to stand up.

"Well, I'll just have to go and investigate, won't I?" Jeb said, pushing me out of the booth and standing up.

"Jeb, how do you know that it's one of us?" Maggie asked him.

"I don't," he answered simply. "But if it is, I need to go and collect it before it dies or summing eats it."

"And what if it's not human?" she countered and he shrugged.

"Take my gun," he replied before jogging off and out of the kitchens.

I shook my head and followed him out and back to Kyle. Jeb tipped his hat to us before taking off and walking away in the direction that we pointed him in with another pair of binoculars. We watched him until we couldn't see him without our binocs and then Kyle and I fought over who got to use them. We watched his retreating back for a very long time before Jeb reached the thing, flashed the light at it and then crouched down beside it, it looked like he was talking to it before he stood up and turned back towards our direction.

"He's coming back," Kyle said, still looking through them. "But he's left something with it. I wonder what he's doing," he mused and I elbowed him for my turn with them.

"Who knows, it's Jeb," I replied, taking them from him and looking through only to see that Jeb was on his way back. I focussed back on the figure, but couldn't make out much more than a blurry, black image on the ground.

Kyle and I sat down and waited for Jeb to return, and I just about fell asleep in the process; I hated night patrol. I heard the stamping of feet and some whistling, and felt the thud as Kyle hit my arm, which effectively woke me out of my drowsy state, so I stood up and stretched as Jeb came and stood beside me.

"Well, what's the verdict?" I asked him and he looked at me.

"Is it a parasite?" Kyle asked before Jeb answered my question.

"Nope, I checked. It's one of us, for sure. But you know the drill. We need to gather a team just in case it decides not to abide by our rules. We can't have it running off to get caught by a bunch of worms and bringing them down here."

"Right Jeb," I answered, starting to head back in the direction of the caves.

"I've got my gun, no need to worry about that," Jeb said and I nodded as I turned around to run back inside. "Oh, and one more thing!" he called out and I stopped.

"Don't bother Jared."

"What?" I asked, not entirely sure that I'd hear correctly.

"You heard me," he said, sitting down to wait. "He's been through enough; he needs his rest after that last raid." He then turned and whispered something to Kyle but I didn't think anything of it.

"Alright," I said, agreeing with him, even though I was a little confused at his last request I took off running, not wanting to keep Jeb waiting while we gathered everything.

As soon as I ran inside the cave entrance, I nearly smacked right into Maggie as she was lurking around the entranceway. I stopped abruptly, but apparently Kyle didn't notice as he continued to plow right into my back.

"What the hell?" he shouted, giving me another shove before continuing on. I heard some choice curse words flooding out from under his breath as he ran by but I ignored it; by that point in my life I was well used to his mannerisms.

"Any particular reason why you're lurking around inside the door Maggie?" I asked, shaking my head at Kyle before I looked over at her.

"Because I don't trust Jeb with this job; he's too damn caring sometimes. I suspect that since the pair of you just came careening in here like bats out of hell that you're going after that thing," she continued and I nodded once. "I'm coming with you."

"Maggie," I sighed but she interrupted me before I could even get going.

"Whatever you say I'm just going to ignore, so keep it to yourself. I'm going out there right now and you all can do whatever Jeb told you to do. We'll be waiting," she said before turning and walking out of the entrance.

Since I basically had no say in the matter I continued on towards the main part of our caves and heard Kyle's voice calling out to some people. I listened for a second until I could confirm which direction it was coming from and I followed the noise until I found him with a bunch of others in the storage cave.

"Need help?" I called out, seeing that they were gathering supplies, but I wasn't sure what they were.

"What are you....?" I asked, seeing Kyle turn with a sharp object in his hand. "Is that a knife?"

"It is," he replied and kept walking. I saw Brandt, Aaron, Wes and another woman that I hadn't really talked to and didn't know her name. When they walked by me I noticed the various clubs, knives and other things that looked dangerously like weapons in their arms.

"What do we need all of these for?"I asked, running to catch up with Kyle. "I thought that Jeb said she was human?"

"Apparently it is, but he told me go get some supplies as necessary precautions," he explained as we all hurried along the passageway. It was never a really good idea to keep Jeb waiting at any time, but this was important so he'd be even less patient than normal.

When we got back outside Jeb instructed everyone to take a weapon so that we could be on our way. I took a club looking thing from Wes, but felt slightly bad about taking it; I knew that this was protocol, but it still scared the crap out of whoever was actually out there.

"Kyle? Which one are you taking?" Jeb asked.

"The big knife," he answered almost immediately, rolling it around carefully in his hands and I rolled my eyes.

"You know that you're not actually going to use that thing, right?" I said and he shrugged with a glint in his eye that I didn't trust one bit.

"You never know when the time might arise, Ian," he simply responded cryptically as they handed out the rest of the weapons to everyone else.

"All right everyone, let's set out. I trust that you've got someone to look out for us while we're gone?" Jeb asked Kyle and he nodded over towards Andy who was standing near the door. I hadn't noticed him come out with us, but he was holding a bat as well.

"All right, but I still don't want any funny business, kay? And remember that this is my place, so whatever goes on out there is by my rules" Jeb finished, eyeing Maggie, but she squared her shoulders and began to walk out and away from the rest of us.

We all followed in line behind her and Wes fell into step with me. I really liked Wes; since I had arrived he'd been really nice to me, and he'd also helped me deal with Kyle on more than one occasion.

"Why do you really think that he's made us all carry these weapons if he was sure that the person was a human?" he asked and I shook my head.

"Maybe because it's Jeb and he's a little crazy?" I offered and he laughed a little before Maggie turned around and frowned at us. He quickly sobered up and we picked up the pace a little to keep up.

The rest of the walk out to where Jeb had left the person seemed to take ages to me; we were all very silent and it reminded me slightly of a funeral procession. There seemed to be an unspoken taboo over the group, but it was rightfully so; we had no idea if it was actually alone or if there were others waiting for us out in the desert. That was a chance that we had to take in order to go and get some people though.

We walked for a good hour and a bit before we arrived at the place where it was laying on the ground, it was just before dawn and there was a glow of red in the sky over the mountains in the horizon. I loved to go outside the caves in the morning and watch the sunrise, but I was usually on patrol or just by myself; not about to figure out if we should take someone back to the caves or not.

Jeb instructed us to stay quiet and follow him so that we didn't startle her or anything; I could see up close that it was definitely a girl and she was sitting up and holding something up to her face. Once we got closer I could see that it was Jeb's metal canteen that she dropped to the ground. The sound of it hitting the dirt clanged for a minute before Kyle spoke up.

"Why'd you give it water, Jeb?" he actually seemed quite angry about that fact and I glared at him, shaking my head. I didn't get why he would be angry until the girl on the ground turned to face us once she'd heart Kyle; then I was a bit angry too.

Silver eyes. This girl had silver eyes just like every other soul that had taken over our planet and forced us remaining rebels to live underground and out of the world that we knew. Jeb lied to us.

It was my natural instinct to glare down at the soul and my grip tightened on the wooden bar in my hand until I could feel my knuckles straining against the skin over them. How dare he lie to us about something this important; something that could potentially put all of our lives in danger in a heartbeat? He wasn't usually this careless and I was really angered, not at the soul that seemed to be cowering on the dirt in front of us, but at Jeb's judgement.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that beside me Kyle had stepped forwards towards it and said something, to which Jeb probably replied to, but I kept my eyes on the soul in front of us. As she heard Kyle's voice cut through the hot air, she flinched away from him and honestly looked petrified of him. It was understandable, as Kyle probably had murder written on his face, but it didn't mean that I had to like the way it looked so scared. I vaguely heart Jeb mention that the situation with her was complicated and I had to butt in before Kyle did something even more stupid. Looking away from her I glared at Jeb.

"How?" I asked, feeling the soul's eyes on me, but I refused to look in its direction. I wanted an answer from Jeb and I didn't want to stick around with this soul for too much longer.

He explained that is his niece; or was, as Kyle pointed out and I couldn't help but to agree. There was no way that his niece was inside there still, so there was no point in having any further conversations about it; we needed to get rid of it before others showed up looking for it. It we worked fast enough, we could get it down to Doc and have it dealt with in the next hour.

My musings were interrupted by two very loud clicks from the gun as Jeb cocked it. I looked over in shock to see Jeb pointing it at my brother, who had clearly started in on the soul again; one quick look at the way the soul was sitting there with her eyes closed, almost yearning for death to come confirmed that.

"Jeb, what are you doing?" I asked incredulously, really fearing that Jeb had gone crazy with the appearance of this girl and that he was really going to shoot him over this. He had joked about it a number of times since we'd arrived and threatened him plenty, but he had never actually cocked the damned thing and pointed it at Kyle. I instantly felt very protective of my older brother.

The feeling disappeared almost as quickly as it came as Kyle turned on Jeb and I was nervous for him then. I could see the rage in Kyle's face; hell, I could _feel_ the rage rolling off of him in waves and knew that he was really, really pissed off about this. If there was something that Kyle couldn't handle it was lying. Add in the fact that Jeb had lied to him about the appearance of a soul and I knew that he would blow a gasket, and soon. Still, Jeb didn't flinch at Kyle's outburst and kept the gun pointed directly at him.

Maggie decided to put her two cents in then, not that any of us needed to hear it, but it was Maggie and she always had to speak and make sure that people could hear her.

"The doctor might be able to learn something from it," she pointed out and my eyes immediately flickered over towards the soul that was still lying in the dirt at our feet.

At the mention of taking her to see Doc, she seemed to cringe away from us, which I didn't think much of. Souls were basically designed to be afraid of us, at least that what I'd heard, which was part of the reason that we were in hiding still. The soul then looked right at Maggie and seemed to concentrate on her and I noticed a look of recognition flash across her face. Seconds later, it spoke for the very first time.

"Aunt Maggie? You're here? How? Is Sharon—" I looked at this creature incredulously as she started spewing out words and saw that her face looked kind of conflicted; like she was almost excited to recognize Maggie, but also upset that she was speaking to her at the same time. I frowned. This was not the kind of person that we wanted to have with us around the caves, I decided right then and there.

Maggie stepped forwards and in her own eloquent way put a stop to the soul's ramblings by slapping it across the face, and it seemed almost surprised that Maggie had done that. I think it was looking more towards the crowbar in Maggie's other hand, probably thinking that she would hit it with that, but not even Maggie was that mean. Not yet, anyways.

Maggie proceeded to scream at the creature and then at Jeb as I studied the soul again. It seemed upset that Maggie had hit it and I didn't understand it. I felt something hit my arm and I looked over at Wes who cocked his head to the side, questioning me. I nodded in response to his silent question, telling him that I was all right.

Kyle snorted in disgust beside me and I could see that he was torn between rushing forwards to chop its head off with his knife and staying in spot, for Jeb still had his gun pointed right at him.

"I don't see anyone," Jeb said to Maggie and she looked pissed at him. "_Hey! Over here!"_ He started yelling out and I frantically began looking around to make sure that nothing popped out at us; Jeb really was crazy. I then immediately started to step back from him because the gun was no longer pointed at Kyle; he was waving it around in the air. My first thought was to run away from him, but I held my ground and he stopped eventually.

Maggie growled at response at him and he replied saying something about her being alone, which I didn't completely believe; though there was some truth behind his crazy words. If someone was following it, they would have come out here by now; Jeb had left it for a while when we gathered everyone and walked out to it.

"Should we kill it?" Kyle whisper floated over to me and I shook my head gently. "Why not?"

"Because it hasn't done anything to us," I answered, looking down at it and saw it looked as though it was far away and thinking about something.

"And if it does?" he asked again and I shrugged.

"_Then_ we kill it," Brandt murmured over my other shoulder and I sighed. Brandt _would_ want to be in on that; he was very violent, though not exactly to the extent of Kyle's psychotic ways. Kyle wasn't always like that though, I sighed again as I watched Jeb step towards it. It was just a coping mechanism that he'd adopted since this whole mess had started for us.

Kyle instinctively stepped forwards with Jeb to make sure that nothing happened to him, and my hand curled tighter around my club as Jeb argued with Maggie some more and then yanked it off of the ground. It wobbled for a second and I could hear a hiss go through the crowd of us as none of us like the fact that Jeb was showing it any sort of preference; it was a soul, who knew what it had up its sleeve.

I stepped up to Jeb, Kyle and the soul as he started talking about getting out of the heat; it was starting to heat up and I knew that meant he wanted to take it home with us.

"You can't just show it where we live, Jeb," I told him not to seem like I was mean or anything, I was just thinking realistically.

Maggie pointed out that it would probably be dead before it got a chance to tell anyone about us and the thought made my stomach turn. Jeb would unknowingly lead it to Doc, who would then proceed to kill it; not that me meant to by any means, that's just what happened to all of the souls that we brought back with us. In our efforts to save these humans trapped inside, we had killed dozens of people. Nothing about this soul seemed special; I just hated the thought of killing _any_ of them, period. I definitely wasn't one of the violent ones of the bunch.

Jeb proceeded to blindfold it and lead all of us back to the caves. Kyle grumbled something about losing the opportunity to kill it for good before he reluctantly followed behind us.

"Kyle, you know that it wouldn't have been right to kill it out there," I said softly to him, trying to keep my voice down as we walked. "We needed to take it back to Doc to let him try and figure this out."

Kyle didn't respond to me; he only shook his head and began to walk faster. Brandt, Aaron and Wes followed him and they basically took off, leaving us in their dust. I didn't care; Kyle had been stupid lately, and with this latest development he would surely be unbearable about the soul, and I figured that it would mostly be because it wasn't Jodi who had stumbled upon us. In a way I was glad that I never had someone that I really cared about in my former life; that way I wasn't yearning for them like he was and I wasn't as angry as he was either.

Maggie broke the silence as the four of us kept walking through the desert.

"You aren't planning to tell him, are you?" she asked cryptically and frowned, not getting who she was referring to.

"He's got a right to know," Jeb replied and I knew then; he has asked me before not to tell Jared to come with us, so that meant that he had to know this soul in some way.

"It's an unkind thing you are doing, Jebediah," she said and I knew she was really mad at him when she used his real name like that; nobody called him that, ever.

"Life is unkind, Magnolia."

And it was true. Our lives had been cruelly torn apart right in front of our eyes, and those of us who called the caves our home were just the few lucky ones who could fight it. It was unkind that we had to be forced to live underground, far away from everything that we'd ever know, but we were surviving; we were survivors.

As we continued walking, I studied the soul that Jeb was guiding across the sand towards our home. Was she really connected to Jared in some way? I had known that he'd lost someone very close to him; he had told me that it was Jamie's sister, but he hadn't explained how he met up with them or what she meant to them. Hell, I didn't even know the girl's name; it was like a taboo between the two of them. It was clear that she meant a lot to him in the way that Jared looked out for Jamie and everything, but I wondered exactly who this soul was, or was pretending to be, at least.

She hadn't given us a name, but I knew that she was Jeb's niece from what he'd told us, but I still didn't get the connection between it and Jared. I was growing frustrated with the whole situation; the rising sun beating down on us didn't help me much either. The soul basically collapsed and Jeb helped it down, giving it some water and Maggie sighed very theatrically.

"Why are you doing this, Jeb?" I asked him, wanting answers now for his unexplainable behaviour. I was getting testy and I didn't like that one bit. "For Doc?" I continued when he didn't answer. "You could have just told Kyle that. You didn't have to pull a gun on him."

"Kyle needs a gun pulled on him more often," Jeb said and I rolled my eyes. It might have been true, but it didn't mean that I had to like that this man would have killed my brother back there in a heartbeat if he had tried anything.

"Please tell me this wasn't about sympathy," I tried another angle, looking directly at him. "After all you've seen..."

"After all I've seen, if I hadn't learned compassion, I wouldn't be worth much. But no, it was not about sympathy. If I had enough sympathy for this poor creature, I would have let her die."

I blanched at his explanation. He probably _should_ have let her die; it would have saved a lot of trouble between all of us and nobody would have been upset.

"What then?" I asked, growing impatient with his answers that only seemed to skirt around my questions. I watched as he helped the soul to its feet and grew angrier as the moments rolled on and my question went unanswered.

"Curiosity," he finally said and I had to bite my tongue to keep from retorting to that comment. There was many things that I wanted to say to him, but I would do it later; I didn't want to get into a fight with Maggie, as I wasn't sure whose side she would take in my argument.

I shook my head and pushed on ahead of him and the soul, leading the way back towards the caves. By that point, I wanted to get as far away from Jeb as possible and give myself a chance to cool down, both literally and figuratively.

**A/N: So, what did you think?  
Review : )**


	2. Chapter 2

**Well, here is chapter two!! **

**Thanks to NicoleBelikov for your review!! : )**

**Disclaimer: I do not own The Host or any of its characters; they belong to the lovely Stephenie Meyer. The idea came from Aikio Hatate, I just brought it to life. Some of the dialogue is taken directly from "The Host", pages 127-149, but it was only used for creative purposes.**

The sun was scorching down upon our backs as we arrived at the caves and I breathed a sigh of relief as soon as I walked inside away from the blistering heat. It was almost mid-day and we normally tried to avoid going outside at that time; partly for safety reasons, and partly because it was so damned hot outside.

I paused for a moment to wait for Jeb, Maggie and the soul to catch up before I took off, realizing that I didn't need to wait for them; Maggie could go with them if she really wanted to. Every soul that we brought back had to be taken around the stupid way to get to the main plaza, and I wasn't in the mood to go there. Instead, I quickly ran along the direct passageway, only branching off of it so that I could discard my stupid club before taking off again.

I could clearly tell when I got there, for I could hear Kyle's voice echoing around the cave. I walked out into the space and joined the crowd; people made room for me to move near the front so that I could clearly hear what he was saying.

"...so we get out there, only to find out that it's a _soul_," he said with malice and I noticed that he was still carrying the machete in his hand, his knuckles gripped tightly around it.

I wordlessly held my hand out towards him and he glared at me before rolling his eyes and handing the knife over; it was very dangerous for Kyle to be addressing a group of people angry, with a weapon in hand. I passed the knife to the person behind me and had them hold it; I wasn't sure if even _I_ would be okay with holding onto it as I wasn't exactly the calmest person either.

"Is what he's saying true?" I heard a whisper beside me and I turned my head to see Lily and Paige standing there wide-eyed and scared.

"Yes," I said back to them before turning back into Kyle's rant.

"And then Jeb proceeds to like care for it and shit and gave it all kinds of water and has decided that it's his niece and is bringing it back to the caves right now. Brandt, Wes, Aaron and I came here as fast as we could to warn all of you," he continued and I cut in then.

"They're here now," I said and everyone fell silent. I could feel all of their eyes on me and I took a deep breath. "I left them at the entrance, but they should be here any minute now."

"You see?" Kyle yelled out and there were a lot of angry murmurings that followed that. "What's he going to do with it?"

"I'm not sure, all he said was that he was curious about it for some reason, so he's bringing it back here and basically showing it where we live. I don't like this one bit," I said, clenching my teeth together. "We don't know for sure if it's alone, but Jeb seems to think it is. I don't trust that."

"Exactly. So we have to do something about this!"

After Kyle exclaimed that, everyone began talking amongst themselves and from what I heard around me, they were not please that Jeb was bringing this creature back to the caves; not pleased at all.

All of a sudden it was dead quiet and I turned around towards the entrance; they must have arrived.

Sure enough, Jeb, Maggie and the soul were standing in the plaza now, and I couldn't help but to frown in anger at them again. The soul wasn't blindfolded anymore, and its disgusting silver eyes were looking at everyone, looking amazed that we were all in here; and that didn't add up in my eyes. I wanted more than anything to kill it right then and there; already it knew too much about us and it wasn't safe.

"Move," a cold voice said from behind me and I acknowledged Jared's request, moving my body to the right so that he could pass through.

He got to the front of the crowd and stepped out away from everyone and I wondered what they hell he was doing. Seconds later, the creature reacted to his presence.

"Jared!" it cried out and rushed towards him and I frowned even further. What the _hell_ was wrong with this soul? Nobody wanted it around here, including Jared, as he reached out and punched it in the face, causing it to fall to the ground and hit its head pretty hard. I couldn't bring myself to care though, if it wanted to rush at me like that, I would have probably done the same thing.

There seemed to be a standoff between Jeb and Jared before the former helped it up off of the floor and I nearly felt sick. Clearly Jared didn't want it around and it meant something to him before, so why were we still being nice to it? I wasn't completely sold on the fact that it was alone, so I was _really_ hesitant that Jeb had exposed all of us to it.

Doc showed up then, someone must have gone to get him, and there he looked at it before summoning Kyle and I forwards. I rolled my eyes and made my way to them through the path that cleared for us through the people. He began to tell us how to get her down to his room so that we could start and get rid of it once and for all when Jared stopped us.

My jaw clenched as he clearly stalled us, and I knew that he didn't want it to be subjected to Doc's testing; even going as far as to flat out deny him the opportunity to finally find out how to extract the souls, like we had been waiting so long to do. I just wanted to get this over with and try to figure it out so that we could get on with our plans and everything, but Jared was just making things difficult.

_Sharon_ even stepped in and said something about how it wasn't his decision to make, but he still rebelled against us. I was really mad by that point. I was confused about what the hell was so special about this soul and I wanted answers; I also wanted to figure out the mystery behind getting those stupid worms out, neither of which was happening right then. Jared flat out said 'no' to us and I saw red then.

At the same time, as if we were on the same wavelength, Kyle and I stepped towards him and I could tell that Kyle was just as angry, if not more, that I was.

"You never object when we do this to other souls, what is it about this one?" I asked, trying to keep my voice in check, but I knew it wouldn't be too much longer before the yelling started.

"I'm not letting you do anything to it," he replied and I glared at him some more.

"You'd better friggen tell us," Kyle said, his fists clenched up tightly and I knew he wouldn't hesitate to punch Jared in a heartbeat.

"She's my niece," Jared said and I turned to glare at him as well.

"She _was_ your niece, Jebediah," Maggie said to him.

"She's yours too," he replied, shrugging.

"What the hell makes her so special?" Kyle yelled out and that started all the arguing.

"That is Melanie!" Jared finally yelled back to us. "When she was a human I loved her, and I can't allow all of you to kill her like that! It's cruel and you know it!"

"Oh, but it was okay to do that with all of the other ones?" I asked, intentionally challenging him, raising my eyebrow.

"They didn't matter to me; I didn't know them before," he said coldly to me and I shrugged.

"Doesn't matter. What does matter is that this is a _soul_ and it is in our _home_ and you're just going to allow it to run free where ever the hell it wants? That's not right. You know the drill, Jared and this is no different. It's going to try and expose us. You're putting ALL of us in danger!" Kyle yelled at Jared and his fists came up in front of him.

I saw Jeb raise his gun from where he was standing a little ways away from us and I backed down a little bit. Kyle eyed it warily, but Jared ran up closer to the soul as it started muttering something.

"Jamie?" it asked repeatedly and Jeb told it that he was fine. It passed out after that and Jared caught it in his arms.

"Now carry it down to Doc's room so that we can get this over with before Kyle and I have to do it for you," I said, threatening him but he barely flinched.

"No," Jared growled, standing up with it still in his arms.

Jeb stepped forward then and whispered something to Jared who immediately started off somewhere. I stepped ahead of everyone to run after him, but was met by the barrel of Jeb's gun.

"You wouldn't," I said to him, looking him right in the eyes.

"Don't tempt me," he replied. "New rule. Stay away from the girl and you won't get hurt. It's my house and she needs to be protected, if that's what we have decided. Now get on with what you were doing."

Jeb backed up away from the crowd and turned to run down the hallway that Jared had disappeared through not a minute before.

"What are we going to do?" Kyle said to me as soon as he was out of range and I shook my head. "We can't let him get away with this; it's not right for her to be running around the caves."

"She could expose us all," I said and I heard a few mutters of agreement from around me.

"What are we going to do?" Aaron asked, repeating Kyle's question and Maggie scoffed.

"Clearly there's only one thing to do. My brother always said that in order for something to be done around here, we needed to have a vote. Majority rules, that's what decides what we do," she announced and I nodded; that was fair.

"So what do we vote?" I asked and Kyle smiled devilishly. He took an empty bin that Violetta was holding in her hands and turned it upside down to stand on.

"Anyone who wants the soul to live and be able to wander free around here so that it can go out and expose us, raise their hands," he called out and I noticed that nobody put their hand up.

"Anyone want us to deal with the problem and get Jared to hand it over so that we can go onto business as usual?" Everyone raised their hand. I noticed that a few of the girls looked a bit sick about it, but they did nonetheless.

"Right, so clearly we need to eradicate the problem," I replied, nodding.

"You guys should do it," Walter spoke up from somewhere in the group. "As much as I don't like doing this using brute force, it seems that we don't have any other option."

"I agree," Wes said. "If anyone's got to do it, it has to be you two, Kyle and Ian."

I smiled wickedly at the prospect of getting rid of this problem that was hiding out somewhere in the caves and nodded, willing to do it if they'd let me.

"All in favour of Ian and Kyle going to do the dirty work for us, say I," Maggie said and was met by a chorus of 'I's'. It gave my ego a bit of a boost and I immediately began planning how to take out Jared in order to get to this soul. Hopefully Jeb wouldn't be anywhere near us with his gun though, so we could get it done quickly.

"I know where they are!" Brandt said and I turned to look at him, nodding appreciatively.

"Brandt comes too," Kyle said and Maggie nodded.

The crowd started to disperse then and I took off to seek refuge in my room; I was still angry and didn't want to be around anyone. Before I could get too far, I felt a hand on my arm and stopped to see Lily holding onto me.

"Be careful, Ian. Jeb seems like he won't hesitate to pull that trigger on anyone," she warned and I shrugged.

"We will be."

She nodded and walked away then and I shook my head, not getting her. She didn't have to be nervous and I didn't understand why she'd single me out to tell me that anyways; I'd heard rumours that she liked Wes anyways.

I made it back to my room and threw open the red door a bit hard; it slammed against the wall and I winced, hoping that the whole place wouldn't come crashing down just because I was angry.

"Don't worry, Kyle did the same thing and he didn't break it either," Brandt's voice sounded from just inside the door and I nodded at him as I stepped inside, putting our door back in place.

I noted that Kyle was lying on his bed as I launched myself at mine, landing face down on the mattress. It didn't give like my old one at home used to and I sighed, missing that one amenity from my old life.

"When are we going to do this?" Brandt asked and I turned my head so that I could see Kyle and Brandt.

"Later," Kyle answered, picking up his old macramé bracelet from Jodi and began to play with it.

"We have to give them time to cool down so that they won't be expecting us," I explained and Brandt nodded.

"Well," he said, standing up. "I don't know about you two, but I'm starving. Catch you later."

Kyle didn't respond and I simply nodded once at him before he left the room. It was silent for a few seconds while I watched Kyle toy with the bracelet. I knew the significance behind it and that he would have been feeling angry and upset not only because of the morning, but also because it wasn't Jodi who Jeb had found out there.

"You okay?" I asked, knowing that I was basically putting myself out on the line and he could either snap at me or beat me up for asking.

"Course I am," he replied, running his fingers over the design in it. "You?"

It took me a couple of seconds to react to his question; that was so unlike Kyle to think of someone else that it took me awhile to process it. The last time that he had asked me if I was okay was probably before we were forced from our house, but it wasn't a time that I could clearly remember.

"I... yeah I'm okay."

"You yelled today," he pointed out. "You never yell."

"I'm really angry," I said and he nodded, not taking his eyes off of the bracelet.

"I am too. It's such bullshit that it's basically running around out there."

"I know," I said, scratching my forehead. "It makes me want to hurt something, and I never want to do that. Not much, anyways."

I saw Kyle crack a smile out of the corner of my eye and wondered what he was thinking, but I decided that I rather liked to live, so I thought better of it.

"Soon enough, little brother. We've got to ambush Jared when he's least expecting it. Brandt said that they're down in the empty storage room by the entrance, which is also bullshit. What if she figured it out and bolted?"

"That's shit!" I exclaimed, enraged again.

"Chill, Ian," Kyle said, wrapping his fist around the bracelet and holding it tight in his fist. "We can take care of this."

"Do you wish that it was Jodi out there?" I asked, taking a chance in asking him.

"Fuck no," he said immediately, but I could see by the way that his grip tightened that he was lying to me. "First of all, Jodi is dead, and second, I wouldn't want to deal with that bullshit that's going on out there."

"But if there was a chance that she could come back, would you do it? Would you give her over to Doc?"

"In a heartbeat. Even if he couldn't get it out, at least it would die and I'd know that she was safe. That's why Jared's so stupid."

"I'm so glad that I never had someone out there that I lost," I said, sitting up and stretching. It was the truth, after all. I hadn't had a girlfriend in awhile before everything started happening, and I was content with the knowledge that I didn't leave anyone I loved as my other half behind. My comment only made me think about the few people that I _had_ lost and I became angry at the soul again. "Kyle, we've got to do it soon."

"As soon as Brandt gets back."

I nodded and leaned back against the wall and waited for him to return. In the meantime, Kyle and I discussed the different ways that we could take out Jared to get to the soul and by the time that Brandt returned I was angry and ready to go again. I wanted to take this soul and get it out of our lives as quickly as possible to save us all. I didn't want to have to kill it myself, as I wasn't too comfortable with blood on my hands, no matter whose it was, but I knew one of the others would do it in a heartbeat if we needed to. Otherwise, we'd get it down to Doc as fast as possible.

Kyle nodded at me from his bed and I stood up as he placed the bracelet back under his pillow and Brandt lead the way out of our room and down the hall. It had been given to him by Jodi on the eve of their separation, so I knew that he was really missing her whenever he held onto it. He never wore it around, but I knew enough to read the signs when I saw them.

The thought that he had lost the one person who had made him almost human again fuelled my anger once again and I knew that it was 'go time' so to speak. The three of us skirted around the corridors out of everyone's way; they knew that we were going to do it, but we didn't want to run into Jeb. I figured that he would be down in the storage cavern with Jared and the soul, but one never knew.

We made it down there undetected and in the blue glow from the lantern I was able to see that it was just Jared down there, but I didn't see the worm anywhere. No matter, we knew where it was, we just had to take him out of the way and search for it ourselves. Kyle gave me an evil smirk and I nodded as we walked into the area in front of him, our footsteps echoing loudly.

Jared stood up almost immediately and revealed a hole in the wall behind him and I knew where it was hiding them. It would make things more difficult to get it out of there, but we'd manage.

"Ah. Here you are," Kyle said as we stepped closer, but Jared didn't respond.

"We're not going to allow this, Jared," I told him, looking him right in the eyes. "We've all lost somebody – hell, we've all lost everybody. But this is ridiculous."

"If you won't let Doc have it, then it's got to die," Kyle said menacingly and I stepped in again.

"You can't keep it prisoner here. Eventually it will escape and we'll all be exposed," I continued, trying to get him to see reason and I was quite impressed with our speech. It sounded like we had planned it, but we actually hadn't. I only hoped that we came across as serious and menacing enough to make him see clearly.

To my disgust, Jared only stepped to the side and blocked the hole in the wall. Although it confirmed my suspicions about where he was hiding the soul, it made getting to it a little harder; clearly he wasn't backing down.

"Don't make this difficult, Jared," Brandt said in a bit of a pissed off tone. He was just looking for the fight, and I knew that at the rate we were going it wouldn't be too far off. "It has to be done."

Still, he didn't budge and I was getting angrier by the second. So was Kyle, apparently.

"We don't want to hurt you, Jared. We're all brothers here. But we will if you make us," he threatened and I knew by the way that Jared stayed still that it would have to come down to physical violence in order for us to even get _remotely_ close to the hole.

"Jared... please," I tried again, but still didn't get an answer. I sighed and barely had any time to react as Kyle lunged towards Jared, staring off the inevitable fight and it was then that Jared move; only to punch Kyle in the stomach though.

What surprised the hell out of me was the fact that the soul had come screaming out of the hole it was in and stood there just looking at us. My mouth dropped open in shock as I watched it go and stand between Kyle and Jared, almost protectively. _What the hell?_

Kyle was fast though. He recovered from his punch to the gut and shoved the soul out of his way, trying to make it fall, but Jared caught it instinctively it seemed, for his hand left her arm like he had been burned or something.

"_Interesting,"_ I thought. _"It seemed as though he hadn't wanted to touch her at all the way he dropped her wrist like that."_

As though it was in slow motion, he shoved her back towards the hole, yelling at her at the same time and the action, but I was even more stunned by its boldness as she turned around to us once again.

"I'm what you want," she said, looking directly at Kyle as Brandt and I stood there almost rooted to the spot. "Leave him alone."

Silence fell upon all of us for a moment and I recovered first.

"Tricky bugger," I commented, unable to believe that it was trying to pull one over on us like that. We were smarter than that though.

"I said get back in there," Jared ordered the soul, but she stood strong.

"It's not your duty to protect me at your own expense," she replied and I was floored.

Jared then tried to push her out of the way again, but she skirted around his hand, putting herself right in front of me and that was when time seemed to shift back to normal speed again. I quickly grabbed her arms and held them behind her back. I could feel her resisting my, but I tightened my grip even with Jared yelling at me at the same time.

Kyle then snapped back into it as well and put Jared into a headlock and he was trying to hit Kyle with his arms, but Brandt grabbed onto him to hold them down. The plan was going to shit that far, but we were getting the message across; that little situation was not okay with us.

She yelled at the other two and still tried to struggle against me, but it only resulted in me holding onto her harder. I didn't really need to, but she needed to know what she was up against physically and that she had no chance against me. Jared started to rebel then and elbowed Kyle in the stomach, forcing him to lose his grip, not able to recover in time to stop Jared from breaking his nose again.

"Finish it, Ian!" Kyle yelled at me, forgetting about his broken nose and ramming himself into Jared to stop him from coming over to us.

"No!" Jared and the soul cried at the same time, and I felt a little remorse, as I hadn't wanted to be the one in a position like that, but I had no choice; it was a 'now or never' kind of deal.

In a heartbeat, I dropped her arms and wrapped my hands around her throat instead, closing them tight enough to cut off her air. I felt sick for a second, but my rage overpowered that feeling as I felt her hands clawing at mine to get me to stop. It only resulted in me gripping her tighter and I could hear it gasping for air, losing track of what was going on with Kyle, Jared and Brandt.

I managed to hold her off of the floor by her neck, squeezing as tight as I could and I could feel her writhing against me, trying to get free, but I wasn't giving it; it was for the best. Seconds later, I froze in place.

_Click, click._

That was the unmistakeable sound of Jeb's gun and all movement in the room halted at hearing that.

"Kyle, Ian, Brandt – back off!" Jeb yelled at us, but none of us dared to move, except for the soul still being held in my hands as she kicked the air around her.

I barely saw it coming, but still I had no time to react as Jared bounded towards me and his fist connected with my face. I immediately cried out at the pain that washed across my face and dropped the soul from my hands as she crumbled to the floor. Jeb began to lecture us then and I couldn't let that go.

"Jeb," I moaned as the action of speaking hurt like hell. I still hand my hand on my face so I wasn't sure how clearly they could hear me. "Jeb. This is insane."

Kyle spoke up then and began demanding answers from him as I checked with my tongue to make sure that I still had all of my teeth and that nothing was broken; I didn't want a disfigured face like Kyle's. His nose had been broken so many times that it was mashed onto his face; there wasn't much one could do for a broken nose, especially down in the caves. Jeb then gave some bogus reply that it wasn't up to him what happened to the soul and I was floored again. When he told us it was Jared's decision, I saw red, but Kyle beat me to the punch again.

"Jared? That makes no sense!" Kyle was severely pissed as I could hear it in his voice. "He's more biased than anyone else! Why? How can he be rational about this?"

Jared tried to protest being in charge of the creature, but Jeb wasn't hearing any of it, basically reading him the riot act for everything. He said that he'd help with it, but it was Jared's responsibility. When Jeb compared it to if Jodi had come back when Kyle tried to interrupt, I knew Kyle wouldn't let that slide.

"Jodi is dead," he hissed, almost echoing the words that he'd told me in our room before. It was a little gross seeing the blood from his nose still dripping down his face and it sprayed all over as he spoke, looking at the soul with hatred in his eyes and I knew then that he held it solely responsible for what had happened with Jodi.

They continued to fight and I groaned about another stupid rule when Jeb told us about his latest one about how any more bodies that shows up of people that we know, we get to call the shots. So basically more crap. He prodded Kyle with his gun, kicking us out and banning us from that area, telling us that he'd shoot us if he caught us down there again and we left.

I felt mortified and compared leaving there empty handed to a walk of shame almost; we had failed at our task and I shook my head.

"That was crap," Brandt said. "I'm out of here."

"Thanks for your help, asshole!" Kyle called after his retreating back. "Asshole did nothing to help us."

"He knew where they were," I pointed out, my face still really sore and I knew that I was going to have a wicked bruise from Jared's punch.

"Shut up," Kyle muttered and I fell silent.

"Anything broken?" he asked after a few minutes when we neared the split between the bedrooms and the main plaza.

"No. Your nose is though," I said and he nodded. "Want to go see Doc about that?"

"Screw that. There's nothing he can do about it, he already told me the last time that it happened," Kyle replied.

"Well maybe if you didn't piss people off when we first came here your nose wouldn't have been broken," I said and he punched my arm.

"I'm just going to ignore that comment and go get some water to clean up a bit. You need some?"

"Yeah," I said, nodding. He took off for the kitchen where there was water and I headed back to the room.

I arrived back at the room and wrenched the door open for a second time that day, sitting down on the edge of my bed that time. I looked down at my shirt and saw that there was no blood on it, for which I was thankful; I couldn't afford to get one of my shirts covered in blood. Kyle had already stolen a few specifically because some of his had been. I settled my head in my hands, resting my elbows on my knees and found a place to hold onto it without it hurting. I had a mega headache, but there were no drugs to get rid of it, so I would deal.

How had it all gone so wrong? Granted, we were probably a little louder than we thought we would have been, with all the yelling and screaming and all, but it wouldn't have been enough to alert Jeb unless he was already on his way down there. Nobody would have gone to get him, for they all wanted us to do the soul in. I really hoped that Jeb and Jared had a god damned plan for the soul, because I was liking life down in the caves; it was the freedom that we had wanted, as limited as it was. I didn't want to be exposed and if they screwed up in any way, I would personally be taking them out, gun or no gun.

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